I liked this following quote... from the Fomenko thread, and take it and the carbon-dating issue as a starting point for an interest of mine in all things archaeological...

Maat wrote:Unfortunately, Fomenko is to real historical research/revision what the 9-11 "truth" movement is to September Clues ...supposedly 'miraculous' events attributed to 'God' in the Old Testament were misperceptions and mistranslations, figurative and literal (including Hebrew), of real physical cataclysms with practical explanations.

Few years ago i saw a documentary that examined the archaeological evidence for the existence Sodom & Gomorrah.The conclusions that the programme made were that the 'mythical' Sodom & Gomorrah were actually very real, and that the biblical take was, in fact, a 'spin' on the actual real destruction of the two cities. Basically, they found a bunch of 1/2 metre square building blocks in the shallows of the dead sea. What this 'discovery' meant, they proposed, was that the blocks must have travelled; regardless of the shrinking or expansion over the last 2 millenia of the dead sea. They found that the ground was highly fluid & sulpherous, prone to earthquakes, flash fires, and shifting sands. I found it the best explanation i had heard. Destroyed by earthquake, with some phosphor & sulphor flashes erupting and producing the biblical 'rain of fire'; the areas became unihabitable & abandoned; and the last newly spawned uncovered remnants & ruins had drifted the 15km or so over time, to the banks of the dead sea.

The carbon dating issue is very interesting, not least for the true dating of 'The Turin Shroud'.This excellent documentary theorises it could actually be the worlds earliest recorded 'photograph', in all likelihood to have been produced by none other than Leonardo Da Vinci ! ...i kid you not !

And, while we're here, on biblical themes, this documentary proposes Jesus was Resuscitated, not Resurrected, with honey & vinegar, and headed East, following the 'spice trail' back to Kashmir, where he had lived & studied with Buddhists from age 15-30. Jesus was known as Yussa Saou; 'the shephard', and lived into his eighties. He is buried in a holy shrine in the Pakistani border town Srinigar, his is the only casket buried North/South rather than the traditional East/West; and the copper footplate that serves as his tombstone represents the scars on both feet that represent the crucifixion nail...

full link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BvrON2xwFYo

There can be little doubt that many of the important sayings of Jesus were uttered by the Buddha five hundred years before Jesus. The Catholic church has tried to deny this for the last 2000 years but the time has come to acknowledge the truth about Jesus.

Everest and the Himalayas continue to rise at "A growth rate of 2.4 in/6.1cm per year doesn't sound like very much. But, if you think about it, that means in the last 26,000 years the Himalayans have risen almost a mile into the upper reaches of the earth's atmosphere!"http://www.extremescience.com/everest.htm

so, supposing Everests continual ascent has remained at a steady rate for the last 26,000 years,what point exactly in time should we say these giant underwater steps were shaped by man ?...

dear nonho, archaeology isnt a big enough subject or topic in & of itself ?my first day job was as an archaeological illustrator,i've still never heard of Velikovsky or Fomenko.

Do we have to run anything & everything Creation/Darwin Archaeology/Geology through a Velikovsky/Fomento real carbon-date/fake carbon-date filter ?

The Moon was created from a collosal meteorite smashing 1/3 of the Earth ?Loch Ness in Scotland is part of a 'fault line' that splitScotland in half. The geology shows a 60 mile shift.like with DODGY DNA results, TRUE CARBON-DATINGis probably still a very inexact 'science'.regardless, i'm still interested in...

When did East Coast Sth.America split from West Coast Africa ?When & how did The Grand Canyon become 18 miles wide?The Future La Palma Island Mega-Tsunami ?The Yellowstone Park Super-Volcano ?

ok, i know this isnt strictly about 'fakery'; ideally, i would like a thread covering archaeology and geology, fake, or not...i'm curious, is all...Scientists Unveil Missing Link In EvolutionScientists have unveiled a 47-million-year-old fossilised skeleton of a monkey hailed as the missing link in human evolution. This 95%-complete 'lemur monkey' is described as the "eighth wonder of the world"http://news.sky.com/home/world-news/article/15284582

reel.deal wrote:dear nonho, archaeology isnt a big enough subject or topic in & of itself ?my first day job was as an archaeological illustrator,i've still never heard of Velikovsky or Fomenko.

Dear reel.deal, forgive yours truly. It just seemed to me that a reinterpretation of archeology went hand in hand with a reinterpretation of history. I certainly don't want to force Velikovsky or Fomenko (of whom I too knew nothing about until this week) down your throat and at the center of the picture! but rather expand from that to all the angles from which history can be re-thought and re-invented. In all my ignorance, it seemed the two topics overlapped enough. And it's not the first time that a title of a topic does not completely do justice to its content.Well anyway no sweat. If you are really uncomfortable in this thread I'll move everything back. Say the word, before the two things get all hopelessly intermingled

Alternatively we can change the title to something more generic like "Reinterpretations of ancient history". What do you think?

reel.deal wrote:The Moon was created from a collosal meteorite smashing 1/3 of the Earth ?Loch Ness in Scotland is part of a 'fault line' that splitScotland in half. The geology shows a 60 mile shift.like with DODGY DNA results, TRUE CARBON-DATINGis probably still a very inexact 'science'.regardless, i'm still interested in...

When did East Coast Sth.America split from West Coast Africa ?When & how did The Grand Canyon become 18 miles wide?The Future La Palma Island Mega-Tsunami ?The Yellowstone Park Super-Volcano ?

I remember reading about some guy whose theory was that the Earth is constantly expanding which would explain some of the 'tectonic plates' drifting.I'll find a link and post it up/edit later as I thought I would just get this out there first.I remember the guy saying that the imagery on Google Earth showing 'stretch' marks out in the Pacific as well as showing what the Earth would look like if the process were reversed.Yes, you may have guessed, all of the profiles of the land masses we see on maps all fitted together pretty much hand-in-glove.

dear nonho, er, yeah, that would be great ! i dont know or care about carbon14 data 'experts',but i do wanna know more about ancient technologies, geology, history & astronomy...i'm still strugglin with an interpretation of archaeology, let alone any re-interpretation of archaeology.

it might be out of place of me to want to get all 'archaeological';but i'd really like to know others thoughts on... Indiana Jones ! (joking!)I mean 'The Ark of the Covenant'; and the many other mysteries of antiquity...

I'm not heavy into esoterics or anything, i'm just fascinated by stuff like this...

Graham Hancock On "Heaven's Mirror"

full link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X7YV6XqnKp4

"Equinoxial 'skygram diagrams' of Ankhor Wat not from 1150ad, but from 10500bc, just as Giza is. the temples of Ankhor mirroring the constellation of draco at dawn in the spring equinox of 10500bc; at the same moment we have the sphinx mirroring the constellation of leo, and we have the pyramids of Giza mirroring the constellation of orion.I think we're looking at a deliberate plan here, the mystery is who disseminated that plan ?Who spread that plan, so that we find it not only seperated places widely geographically;but also places that are widely seperated in time."

This guy Graham Hancock's 'Heaven's Mirror' theory - book & documentary - supposedly got'disproven' ? but i still think he was onto something with ancient temples worldwide beingdesigned for optimum equinoxial viewing, and built on site-plans that copy constellations.Basically, i'm asking, was there ancient 12.500 year old common worldwide shared knowledgeof astronomy ? (...at the end of the last ice-age, when enormous 400ft sea-levels rose ?!?)

I want to know if the Roman Empire declined due to a super-volcano causing a 10 year'nuclear winter'; where horses starved while cattle survived due to grasslands beingcoated with ash...

dear nonho, please split this thread back, i dont give a shit about carbon-dating.the velikovsky vs fomenko meta pata-physic semantic ontological dialectic epistomology is fermenting my brains ! we have dedicated threads with no or 1 reply called things like "is this man see-through, maybe?"cant we just have a thread called archaeology ? ...pretty please ? i'll make it up to ya with a killer ultimate 'Turin Shroud' fakery report...

there are some articles on http://jesusneverexisted.com/ about deception in archeology concerning "biblical" subjects. one is about herod vs. the emperor hadrian.

"What is striking in the synagogue images is that the temple depicted in the frescoes is entirely Roman in design, complete with winged putti on the pediment.

Moses leads the Israelites out of Egypt through a Roman triumphal arch, wearing a white toga with a purple stripe and carrying not a staff but the club of Hercules! He is barefoot, a typical Roman motif that he stands on sacred ground. In the scene with the burning bush, the Jewish hero strikes a pose used in Roman heroic statuary to symbolize virtue. Even the smallest details are drawn from Graeco-Roman sources."--- http://jesusneverexisted.com/herod-vs-hadrian.html

"In the sacred history, the ‘father of the races’ Abraham is placed in Babylonia anachronistically re-labelled Chaldea - a term more appropriate to the empire of Nebuchadnezzar in the 600s BC. The character of Abraham alternates between bedouin pastoralist and landed grandee. Neither has the slightest claim to historical veracity."--- http://jesusneverexisted.com/egypt.htm

Unlike the mythical Jesus Christ, we know what Caesar looked like and we have a complete history of his life. In turn, general, orator, historian, statesman and lawgiver. We have words written by Caesar himself and words written by both his friends and his enemies. Artifacts confirm his life and death, as do his successors. Caesar established a style of government – and a calendar – which endured for centuries. --- http://jesusneverexisted.com/exist.html

"It’s true enough that the majority of Biblical historians do not question the historicity of Jesus – but then again, the majority of Biblical historians have always been Christian preachers, so what else could we expect them to say? For all their bluster, the truth is that for as long as there have been Christian writings, there have been critics who have disputed Christian claims and called events from the Gospel stories into question. And since at least the 18th century a growing number of historians have raised serious problems that cast Jesus’ historicity into outright doubt, as we’ll see."http://www.atheismresource.com/2010/jes ... ted-at-all

"Many faithful people believe the shroud represents the actual burial cloth of Jesus where they claim the image on the cloth represents an actual 'photographic' image left behind by the crucified body.

The first mention of the shroud comes from a treatise (written or dictated) by Geoffroi de Charny in 1356 and who claims to have owned the cloth (see The Book of Chivalry of Geoffroi De Charny). Later, in the 16th century, it suddenly appeared in a cathedral in Turin, Italy. (Note that thousands of claimed Jesus relics appeared in cathedrals throughout Europe, including the wood from the cross, chalices, blood of Jesus, etc. These artifacts proved popular and served as a prosperous commercial device which filled the money coffers of the churches.) [See The Family Jewels for some examples.]

Sadly, many people of faith believe that there actually exists scientific evidence to support their beliefs in the shroud's authenticity. Considering how the Shroud's apologists use the words, "science," "fact," and "authentic," without actual scientific justification, and even include pseudo-scientists (without mentioning the 'pseudo') to testify to their conclusions, it should not come to any surprise why a faithful person would not question their information or their motives. Television specials have also appeared that purport the authenticity of the shroud. Science, however, does not operate though television specials who have a commercial interest and have no qualms about deceiving the public.

Experts around the world consider the 14-foot-long linen sheet, which has remained in a cathedral in Turin since 1578, a forgery because of carbon-dating tests performed in 1988. Three different independent radiocarbon dating laboratories in Zurich, Oxford and the University of Arizona yielded a date range of 1260-1390 C.E. (consistent with the time period of Charny's claimed ownership). Joe Zias of Hebrew University of Jerusalem calls the shroud indisputably a fake. "Not only is it a forgery, but it's a bad forgery." The shroud actually depicts a man whose front measures 2 inches taller than his back and whose elongated hands and arms would indicate that he had the affliction of gigantism if he actually lived. (Also read Joe Nickell's, Inquest On The Shroud Of Turin: Latest Scientific Findings)

Walter C. McCrone, et al, (see Judgment Day for the Shroud of Turin) discovered red ochre (a pigment found in earth and widely used in Italy during the Middle Ages) on the cloth which formed the body image and vermilion paint, made from mercuric sulphide, used to represent blood. The actual scientific findings reveal the shroud as a 14th century painting, not a two-thousand year-old cloth with Christ's image. Revealingly, no Biblical scholar or scientist (with any credibility), cites the shroud of Turin as evidence for a historical Jesus."

chess_king wrote:Experts around the world consider the 14-foot-long linen sheet, which has remained in a cathedral in Turin since 1578, a forgery because of carbon-dating tests performed in 1988. Three different independent radiocarbon dating laboratories in Zurich, Oxford and the University of Arizona yielded a date range of 1260-1390 C.E. (consistent with the time period of Charny's claimed ownership).

I thought carbon-dating is not trustworthy. Can anyone here help me with my question - if all 'ancient manuscripts' are merely medieval copies, and we can't trust carbon-dating or dendrochronology (tree ring-dating), or ice core-dating, how can do any kind of timeline for ancient history? Is there NO trustworthy method? Nonho, how do we date Roman History, and put all the ruins in some kind of understandable context?

fbenario wrote:Nonho, how do we date Roman History, and put all the ruins in some kind of understandable context?

I don't think carbon-dating had ever much relevance in archeology. It only served a purpose to identify much larger spans of time, since it get less and less reliable the more one wants to squeeze precise dating out of it. And archeology, that studies things that are closer to us in time, certainly requires much more precision than, say, the age of fossils.

Dates of Roman times have been produced by different methods... I imagine that when something is excavated, the sheer layering in the soil is evidence that can be used for dating. Buildings in particular are not to be discovered in the void, but always next to other buildings and structures that preceded them or followed them. Such methods, of comparison of different sources and observation of multiple hints given by the context is certainly the more reliable one: it never says the last word, it can always be changed if new things are discovered, and it is the fruit of a collective research that it is certainly much more reliable and interesting than "scientific" results produced by a single lab that holds the key to DNA or Carbon dating evidence or whatever.

For sure I cannot comment on the scientific accuracy of the carbon dating principle per se. It is possible that it is sound in itself: but it is undeniable that carbon dating results can be polluted and tampered with in so many ways.

Just as an example: there is an extraordinary paleolithic cave discovered in 1994, the "Chauvet cave" in the Ardennes, that contains paintings supposedly dated 30,000 years BP (before present), a dating that surprised everyone considering that caves like Altamira and Lascaux are normally dated around 10,000 BP.

Chauvet has been declared authentic. The "authenticity" was established observing the lines drawn on the walls of the cave, that apparently contain a number of tiny holes due to erosion that new lines would not have, and also "observing the style of the paintings and the use of colors". I have a book about everything that concerns this cave and, personally, in all my ignorance I am not convinced. My impression is that Chauvet is a forgery, and a blatant one at that. The drawings in it are too good, in a way, and at the same time disappointingly "modern". Here are a couple of examples (from a google search):

As you see there is something that eerily reminds one of Walt Disney, more than reminding us of our heroic cro-magnon ancestors.

But what about dating? Samples of the charcoal from the black lines were analyzed, producing the following results: 32,410 +/- 720 BP and 30,790 +/- 600 BP. Other elements were analyzed from torch marks that produced results of 4 thousands of years later, and samples from the floor results even 6 thousand years after the paintings.The professors came to the conclusion that this cathedral had been frequented by humans for thousands of years before being abandoned and forgotten (and yet for those thousands of years while the cave was being frequented, the painting were never renovated or drawn on, but also never faded away despite people going about and lighting fires next to them).

Off the top of my head, all it took to the forgers of the Chauvet cave to accomplish their deed was perhaps to use pieces of coal that were themselves 30,000 years old; and as to the erosion marks, there might be mechanical or chemical ways to produce them. Yet these considerations don't stop the professors from completely relying on carbon dating, and thus declaring to the world how Chauvet contains "the world's oldest paintings".

While it should be obvious to anyone that fakery and forgery in the arts have in fact been used for a long time, and are more common that one would think.

It is enough to consider a character like Eric Hebborn, who probably was the most extraordinary forger of old paintings that ever lived (and who it is said produced many of the drawings and some of the paintings we today admire in public galleries).

On January 8, 1996, shortly after the publication of the Italian edition of his book The Art Forger's Handbook, Eric Hebborn was found lying in a street in Rome, his skull crushed with a blunt instrument. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Hebborn

Hebborn described profusely the innumerable ways to counterfeit products of art to make them look authentic and fool any critic or professor thrown at them. But this does not stop books of art history from being written, does it?

* Actually one day I'll might try to write a thread about fakery in arts, because it truly is a Pandora's box. It is my contention that the current trend of forced restoration of old paintings (that it is actually producing versions of such paintings that are incredibly inferior and forever diminished) is in fact a scheme to subtract paintings away from the public, to stash them in the hands of the elite somewhere. But of course, nobody can say peep on this, because the restorations are "scientific".